#masqueradegames

I was 14 years old and it was January 23rd of 1999. My mom and grandmother took me to Masquerade Games before we all three went to dinner, after dinner my good friend Nick was going to come over to spend the night playing video games as it was a Saturday. I had money to spend (I believe it was leftover from Christmas) and genuinely had no idea what they would have. As soon as I walked in Bettina, one half of the couple that owned the store, immediately told me that she had something special for me that I would love.

At this point I had been a regular at Masquerade for at least 2 to 3 years, the owners knew I didn't care much for most anime (DBZ and Pokemeon were exceptions) nor most CCG/RPG type stuff. They knew I liked video games and loved professional wrestling. Much to my shock she had an import professional wrestling game from Japan and boy did it look weird.

I saw the cover from behind the glass, the game was shrink-wrapped and was $49.99, a hefty sum for a 14 year old who had yet to enter into the lucrative bootlegging business. She knew that I wanted to see the back as that is where SCREENSHOTS always lurked! So she made it a point to immediately grab the game, take it out of the showcase and hand it to me. I turned the jewel case over and much to my shock I saw this:

The in-game screenshots floored me, and not for the right reasons. This was 1999, the same year Gran Turismo 2, Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver and the immortal Dreamcast were released. The graphics I was looking at just didn’t cut it, plus it was all in Japanese and I knew absolutely nothing about Japanese wrestling. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement.

Fortunately, I had guilt as she had made it sound like it was something they ordered for me as a kind gesture, so I felt obligated to make the purchase and I did so. I had never played a Japanese Pro Wrestling game and figured at the very least it would be a weird experience.

That day in 1999 started my love of both Puroresu (a nickname for Japanese Pro Wrestling) and more specifically my love of the Fire Pro Wrestling series of games. The name of this game is Fire Pro Wrestling S: 6Men Scramble and when I started playing it I was immediately fascinated, frustrated and generally awe-struck in what was available in this game. The roster had about 160 wrestlers, about 10 times more than other games at the time! It not only featured almost exact versions of wrestlers from All Japan, New Japan, FMW and many other of the multitude of Japanese Federations....but it even featured North American Wrestlers! I was floored to see Rob Van Dam, Mick Foley, Chris Jericho, Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Undertaker, Vader, Bam Bam Bigelow, Sting, Road Warriors, Steiner Brothers, Ric Flair, Shawn Michaels, Goldust, Bret Hart, Kevin Nash, Konnan, Rey Mysterio Jr. and even MMA guys like Dan Severn and Ken Shamrock. Add to this legends (something US games didn’t do at the time) like Terry Funk, Bruiser Brody, Andre The Giant, Lou Thesz and The British Bulldogs.

It’s fitting I kept the receipt for something that ended up having a permanent influence on two of my favorite interests. Since that day I have slowly become a bigger and bigger fan of Japanese Wrestling, additionally that day instantly made me a gigantic fan of the entire Fire Pro Wrestling series.

Later in 1999, I was thrilled to see that a new game in the series was coming out for Sony Playstation called Fire Pro Wrestling G! Masquerade made sure to have it in stock and I purchased it immediately, it did not disappoint (it’s the game on the top in the picture below).

In the next two years, my interest in gaming mirrored the health of the Sega Dreamcast, it began to decline as my interest in music and girls took up my free time. Masquerade Games moved to a new location that was much bigger and more successful, unfortunately my trips became fewer and far between. In January of 2001, Sega announced the end of the Dreamcast at the end of March. The console lived on a bit longer in Japan and on March 1st, Fire Pro Wrestling D was released for the Dreamcast, exclusively in Japan (pictured as the lower game in the above picture).

Fire Pro Wrestling D was the last purchase I made at the relocated Masquerade Games. It had only been two years since I purchased 6Men Scramble but in my memories they seem like different worlds to me. It was around this time my interest in Professional Wrestling would dwindle and I would stop watching until Winter of 2005.

Since then I have been able to get some of the other Fire Pro games at flea markets and on ebay, two were released on the Game Boy Advance in America and the final game of the series “Fire Pro Wrestling Returns” actually was released as a budget title in America for the PS2! I’ve seen dug deeper into other Japanese Wrestling Games and it’s fun to revisit something that existed half a world away.